NIKKI-SHELL

My little helper

I spent my morning armed with rubbish bags and the vacuum and cleared out Mia's disgustingly messy room.  I mean really! how is it that such a small girl can make so much mess? 

At least i had help.....

No Impact Project-thanks

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone's suggestions on my No Impact Project posts.  It was a great way to remind ourselves to be a little greener every day.  We're working on reducing our waste and are making changes to our food consumption.  We're looking into buying secondhand bicycles to get around although i'm still unsure whether i will ride to work. 

The weekend challenges were about 'giving back' and 'taking a break from everything'.  Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of spare cash to give to many charities or the time to volunteer through the day.  I feel i do my part in giving back through Wardrobe Refashion.  I run the site as a way to encourage people to give sewing a go, to think about their impact on the planet and how they can make a change through the clothes that they wear. 

I can't say i took a break from 'everything' but i did spend time with my family.  The girls helped me to clean the yard and we baked bread and made a huge pot of chicken and sweetcorn soup from scratch.  We had so much fun.

Bread recipe here, thanks to The Shopping Sherpa.

I hope these posts have given you food for thought.  Could you be greener?  In doing so would you have more time for you and your family?  Would you be healthier?  Happier?  It's the simple things in life that are best.  Cuddles with your kids, time to think while hanging out the washing, a beautiful meal made with simple ingredients and shared with friends. 

Go on!  Give it a try, step by step.

Little sister Wiksten skirt

Jenny Gordy's Wiksten Tulip Skirt pattern was published in Stitch magazine (Fall 2008).  My sister turned sweet 16 at the end of December so i made her a version in 'Kartel Denim' from Tessuti.  I love how the red top-stitching looks on the dark denim and i found the perfect vintage buttons in my stash, i even stitched a spare to the inside side seam just in case.

I had heard of others having trouble with the skirt gaping in-between the buttons so i made sure to have the buttonholes vertical rather than horizontal, i think this is a good fix to the problem.  Another fix is to forget the buttonholes altogether like Lisa did and use snaps underneath instead.

I'm so pleased with how it turned out but you know what the worst thing is?  It's still hanging in my sewing room.  I'm such a bad present giver, never on time!  I'll post it this week Natalie ;)

I have another of these in the works for myself using another denim but this one will have cream stitching and buttons.  If you plan to make one for yourself then you should check out the pattern corrections before getting started.  Also, check out the Wiksten Patterns Flickr group for some inspiration.

No Impact Project-Day Six

WATER

I dug out our most recent water bill to check what our water usage is per person.  According to the chart we use on average 69 litres per person which means we're well under Target 155.  Melbourne's current water levels are at 36.7% and we are on level 3a water restriction.

Ways in which we save water are:

• We don't have a bath
• We have a water efficient shower head (and very low water pressure!), take short showers and sometimes we share :)
• Sponge bathe
  
• We wear clothes more than once before washing them (unless they're smelly or dirty)
• We have a front loading washing machine (uses less water than a top loader) and wash on a cold quick wash
• We don't leave the tap running and run the water gently when needed
• Our garden is full of native plants and we have no lawn
• We water plants with cooking water

How do you save water?

No Impact Project-Day Five

ENERGY

Today's (Thursday) challenge was to take note of everything in our home which uses energy (i.e., electricity, oil, gas, batteries.  Now i'm not about to list the contents of my house here on my blog but i will share with you the changes we have made and the changes we can make.

• We have changed our light globes to compact fluorescent bulbs (thanks to our energy supplier who did it for free!)
• We buy green power
• We dry our clothes outside on the line rather than in a tumble dryer
• We wash our clothes on a quick cold wash in our frontloader (with our homemade laundry soap)
• We could be better at switching off at the wall when not in use, we were very strict about this but with 3 little girls who can now reach the switches we're constantly walking around the house switching off lights.  They'll get it eventually!
• We can be more mindful or how often we use electrical/gas items.  Can we do the task without using these items? 
• When using these items can we utilise them in a better way?  For example, when we use the oven or stove we could make extra and freeze for a later date (this also saves money when buying ingredients in bulk)
• We keep the blinds down when we know it will be a hot day, this keeps the inside of the house cooler therefore there is less need for the air con.
• In winter on chilly days we rug up in layers and quilts and use hot water bottles instead of using the heater.

What do you do to reduce your energy consumption?  Is there anything else you could be doing?

No Impact Project-Day Four

FOOD

Whenever we're out for lunch we take food with us, i take a packed lunch to work in my reusable lunchbox and 'nude food' containers.  We have water bottles and fill them with tap water (no buying bottled unless absolutely necessary). 

Even though we do all that and have home cooked meals everyday rather than takeaway, food (alongside trash) is our biggest problem i think.  We eat a relatively healthy diet but there is still room for MUCH more improvement.  Today i borrowed '100 Mile Diet' (or Plenty as it's known in the US) from the library and have looked to see if there are any local farmers markets, there are a few and we'll be paying a visit. 

I'm interested to see how much we can improve. How do we improve?  Well, we are meat eaters, we don't eat a lot of meat but we do have it a number of times per week, either beef or chicken or ham or prosciutto usually.  And we eat quite a lot of dairy products, Esme loves cheese, Kev and Mia love yogurt, we all like milk in our hot drinks and cereal, eggs were a big thing but have recently not been so popular, sometimes the mere thought of eating an egg makes my tummy queasy, i have to really want to eat them. 

Although i'm not about to make my family vegan i would like to change a few things.  More vegetarian meals, make more of our own foods such as bread (we did make this using a bread machine but it broke), and buy organic or at best locally produced meat and dairy products.  The only problem with organic is the expense, it's not really within our budget but maybe with a few changes elsewhere we might be able to factor it in. 

So, i'd like to see us eat more locally, fresher, homemade foods.  I spoke to a gardener today (who was buying fabrics!), i mentioned my inability to grow any form of food without it dying before we could eat it.  She suggested we start with herbs in pots and i think i will!

Now i just need to remind Kev to buy less packaged food, make some muslin bags for the veggies from the market and start making bread.  Anyone have a really good bread recipe that can be left to rise overnight?  Maybe i should start a sour dough starter?

What changes could you make to your food consumption habits?

No Impact Project-Day Three

TRANSPORTATION

I've not changed my transport habits at all.  We don't own a car so our main forms of transport are our feet,

 and the public transport system, more often trains than buses or trams.

To get to work i walk the 15 minute route to the station, a 20 minute train ride gets me into the city then it's a matter of a few minutes to get to the shop.

I've started looking into riding a bicycle to work.  I considering if i could ride the 10km journey without killing myself!  Oh and there's the small matter of needing a bicycle and all the stuff that goes with it! 

No Impact Project-Day Two

TRASH

 

We collected all our trash yesterday.  As you can see above we used 3 tins, a number of plastic wrappings, a water bottle (left behind by a friend), some paper packaging including 2 cereal boxes which we used for a craft project before adding the remaining pieces to the collection and a handful of thread and fabric scraps from a dress i made for Mia (using fabric from my stash).  There were also 3 disposable nappies, didn't think you'd want to see those and it would have got a bit smelly!

Food waste created throughout the day consisted of the crusts from toast , tea bags, tea leaves, coffee grinds, egg shells and rice from dinner.  Not too bad really, we filled a small plastic container.

What could we do to reduce our daily waste even more?  Well, i think we could be more mindful of buying things in plastic and paper packaging by using reusable bags when we shop.  Since i work full time and Kev stays home he's has the pleasure of doing the grocery shopping so i have little control over the situation but if i make bags and nag him (even more than i do) then i think we could reduce our packaging waste. 

Some food waste just can't be helped (egg shells?!), but wasting food by over judging portions can be changed and encouraging the girls to eat their crusts to make them strong is something we're working on.  Unfortunately we accidentally left our compost bin behind when we moved house otherwise we'd be throwing all our food scraps in there.

As for the fabric and thread scraps, these were the tiniest pieces that i had left over, all bigger pieces went into the scrap box for smaller projects and for my girls to use in their creations.

One of the steps of the challenge for today is to put together a no-trash travel kit consisting of reusable drink bottle, lunch box, reusable produce bags and a napkin.  I already have this which i use for work and the family all have their own too.

A few other ways we reduce waste are:

• I use a DivaCup and cloth pads
• We make our own laundry soap
• We never have take-away food

How can you reduce your waste?  Any tips?

No Impact Project-Day One

Today we start the No Impact Project.  Although we feel we're already pretty good at being Eco friendly we sometimes feel we slip now and again and need a little reminder. 
Watch this trailer for the No Impact Man Movie......

Now we're not about to go as extreme as that, but we will try to reduce our impact more than we already do.

You can read the manual here but the weekly list is as follows:

SUNDAY-Consumption
MONDAY-Trash
TUESDAY-Transportation
WEDNESDAY-Food
THURSDAY-Energy
FRIDAY-Water
SATURDAY-Giving Back
SUNDAY-Eco-Sabbath

I think the areas we need to pay the most attention to are Trash and Food.  I feel we've slipped into some bad habits again recently with packaging and wasting food so lets see if we can improve those areas. 

Today is all about consumption.  We are going to assess our consumption habits and see what we can do to reduce them, we're not big spenders in general but there's always room for improvement even if it is just to make us aware of what we do consume and be more mindful.  We'll keep a general list of the things we purchase throughout the week.  Personally i'm going to shop from my stash this week (no fabric purchases allowed!) and refashion what i have in my wardrobe.  We'll try to fix anything that breaks and make our own where we can.

Check out the 'Stop Shopping Hour of Power' for inspiration.

shirrrring

Yesterday i was inspired by the gorgeous little Grumbles.  You see her very clever Mum had whipped up a dress for her using the stash.

Today was forecast to be a scorcher (so i needed something cool to wear), i had the perfect fabric in my stash, a few bottles of cider in the fridge, my imagination and some records playing in the background courtesy of Kev, so really i had no excuse not to!

I pretty much made it up as i went, but really there's nothing to a shirred dress.  Multiple rows of elasticated stitching, side seams and a hem, that's it.

A few tricks i have learned are to reinforce the edges of the shirring by sewing over them, sewing the seams AFTER sewing the shirring and then for an extra added reinforcement overlock the seams.  I also made a casing in the top before sewing the shirring and threaded a 1/4" piece of elastic through it once the shirring was complete.  This gave the top edge a gathered look rather than sticking out.

It is so comfortable to wear although next time i'll make the hem wider for my extra long stride and i might add some straps.

The fabric is a cotton voile and was a gift sent to me by Colette a year or so ago, i've not seen it in the shop so i'm guessing it's now out of stock but there are many others to choose from.  I'm favouring Iro Gauze which Jana recently made up into a gorgeous maxi dress.

Big thanks to Leisl for taking the pics for me :)

EDIT TO ADD INSTRUCTIONS FOR SHIRRING: Wind shirring elastic onto the bobbin not to tight but not too loose.  Using regular thread on top which matches your fabric sew as normal in rows.  Sew shirring BEFORE sewing the side seams. :)